


Pride and Joy, Et Cetera

by themayqueen



Series: Sweetest Downfall [4]
Category: Hanson (Band)
Genre: Attempted Abortion, Best Friends, Childbirth, Divorce, F/M, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Secrets, The Walk Era, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themayqueen/pseuds/themayqueen
Summary: Spencer knows what she needs to do, but it doesn't go quite according to plan.





	Pride and Joy, Et Cetera

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an extra for the Sweetest Downfall Series. You do not need to read it to understand the rest of the series, but you do need to read the rest of the series (Cause and Effect, Cesura, Interwoven and Denoument) in order to understand it.
> 
> This is an alternate version of events, beginning with the end of chapter twenty four of Cause and Effect.

_June 9, 2009_

Spencer let her phone clatter to the tile, the sound seeming to echo forever, though she supposed the fact that her face was pressed against the floor could account for that. The tile was cool and strangely damp feeling, and it made her feel sick. The bathroom also seemed to be spinning, although what was left of her rational thought told her that simply wasn’t possible.

Simply put, Spencer felt drunk. She didn’t recall that being a side effect of the abortion pill. The doctor really should have warned her about that, Spencer thought. It was no fun feeling drunk if you skipped the happy part and went straight to the—

Spencer gagged.

She pulled herself from the floor as quickly as she possibly could, her stomach cramping in a way that didn’t feel at all like Dr. McCarty had described. It felt distinctly closer to the feeling that often came the morning after a night of drinking. With shaky arms, Spencer pulled herself up to a kneeling position in front of the toilet, and emptied the contents of her stomach into it. It wasn’t much—just pasta, water and the bitter taste of the pills she had just swallowed.

She flushed the toilet, then collapsed back into the floor. Although her stomach still hurt, she had a sinking feeling that she had managed to screw up even a simple medical procedure. Only she could manage to take her birth control and the abortion pill incorrectly.

Spencer wasn’t sure what the universe was trying to tell her, but she was too tired to fight it. She was pregnant, and evidently, she was going to stay that way.

 

_June 11, 2009_

Zac waited outside the studio for what felt like hours. The sun beat down on him, but he refused to leave his seat. Spencer would show up; he was certain of it.

When nearly an hour had passed since the time she agreed to meet him and she hadn’t answered any of his texts, he was forced to admit that she wasn’t coming. Zac wasn’t sure why it surprised him so much. Spencer had constantly assured him that he shouldn’t expect anything from her, but every time he had asked her to meet up with him, she had eventually conceded. He supposed that was why they ended up getting caught; he had gotten cocky. He had assumed that in spite of what she had said, she would always be there when he called.

He was wrong.

 

_September 17, 2009_

A baby girl.

Until she had seen the ultrasound, Spencer had still been able to kid herself and almost believe that it wasn’t really happening. She had certainly tried to keep it from happening, but all of her efforts had somehow failed. She was pregnant. She was having a baby. A female baby with fifty percent of Zac Hanson’s DNA in her little, alien-looking body.

Abbey had come with her to the appointment for moral support, and now that it was over, had insisted the two of them get lunch at the Tin Roof. Spencer couldn’t argue with that; aside from GiGi’s Cupcakes, anything covered in cheese seemed to be her primary craving, and no one did cheesy fries like the Tin Roof. Even though a part of her wanted to just go back to the apartment and curl up in bed, a bigger part of her wanted those fries. Still, she was doing a good job of hiding that excitement, given that she was still shaken from having actually seen the baby growing inside of her.

“You feel better now?” Abbey asked around a bite of one of her own cheesy fries.

Spencer shrugged. “Physically, yes. You know these fries can heal a multitude of ailments. But this is real, Abbey. There is a little bastard child growing inside me and I think I’ve come too far to deny it or give it away or anything.”

“You think?” Abbey asked. “I mean, you could still put it up for adoption.”

“She,” Spencer corrected. “She’s a girl, and god help me, I did not know I had any sort of motherly, nurturing instincts at all, but… apparently I was wrong. I’m not saying Zac ever needs to know about her, especially not if he’s trying to work on his marriage—and for all I know he is—but I can’t give her up. She’s mine, even if she never gets the chance to be his. I didn’t realize that until today.”

“You’re still a stubborn bitch, you know that?” Abbey asked.

“Yeah, well, pregnancy hormones can only do so much,” Spencer replied with a smirk.

 

_December 8, 2009_

Zac sighed and placed his drumsticks on top of his snare. He had been trying to warm up before the rest of the band arrived—they had a few more tracks to polish up before they could call the album finished—but he couldn’t focus.

It was over.

The final divorce decree had arrived at his apartment that morning. He always checked his mail before going to the office, and it was right there waiting for him, ready to ruin his day. He had wanted to try, and after he returned to Tulsa, he almost persuaded himself to believe that Kate wanted to try, too. With Spencer no longer in his life, Zac thought he could finally be a good husband again—or perhaps for the first time ever. Kate was less convinced, and now, five months later, it was over.

It was sad that, after five months of not speaking to her, the first thing he wanted to do when he opened that letter was call Spencer and let her know. Somehow, he thought that if there was nothing to tie him to Kate anymore, Spencer would finally want to be with him. A louder voice in the back of his mind told him that Spencer just didn’t want him. It had only been sex to her. She didn’t love him.

But the smaller, hopeful voice won.

He climbed down from his drum throne and reached for the bag he’d thrown into the floor near his congas. Spencer’s number was still programmed into his address book, even though it had been months since he had lost the nerve to keep calling and texting her. This time, though, he wasted no time scrolling to her name and pressing “call.” It rang several times and Zac began to give up hope when someone finally answered.

“Hello?” The voice didn’t sound like he remembered, but it did sound confused.

“Umm, hello?” Zac repeated. “I think I may have the wrong number… Is this Spencer?”

“No, this is Abbey. She left her phone at home today accidentally. Who is this?”

She had deleted his number, Zac supposed. He thought he remembered her roommate being named Abbey, though. At least Spencer hadn’t changed her number to avoid him. “Umm, okay, well I was just… I just wanted to talk to her. This is, umm, this is Zac.”

“Zac Hanson?” Abbey asked in a tone that was far too accusatory for Zac’s liking. “So she did delete your number. I didn’t believe that she would really do it.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Zac mumbled. Even though he was relieved, talking to Spencer’s roommate was awkward. “Look, would you pass along a message to Spencer for me?”

“Depends on what the message is.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m officially divorced as of today. I don’t know why I wanted her to know, because she probably won’t care, but it’s just… well, she was the first person I thought of, and so I just had to call. If you don’t tell her or if she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to call me back… I’ll try to understand that.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, finally punctuated by a heavy sigh.

“Is everything… is everything okay?” Zac asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Zac… there’s something I need to tell you, whether Spencer wants me to or not…”

 

_January 24, 2010_

Six hours.

Spencer had already been in the hospital for six hours, and the baby—who she still hadn’t decided on a name for—had yet to see fit to allow herself to be delivered. Even though the pain was excruciating, the doctors and nurses kept assuring Spencer that it wasn’t yet time to push. Each time, she felt more and more like pushing one of them.

Abbey had left the room several minutes ago in search of something to eat, and to Spencer’s feverish mind, it felt like she had been gone for hours. Her parents were out in the waiting room, having arrived separately. At least her father hadn’t brought his new wife. Spencer had no particular complaint with her, but she didn’t need to be a part of this day. Her mother and father could find plenty to argue about without any added drama, and as soon as Spencer told them she was keeping the baby, the argument had begun. The second she heard the name Daniel, she threatened to have hospital security escort them out, and they had at least seen fit to take their disagreement to the waiting room.

All Spencer really wanted to do was nap. The epidural she had just been given was starting to dull the pain, but her mind was still running at a hundred miles an hour. It was like the sort of drunk she got from certain types of alcohol; although her mind felt alert, everything else seemed distorted and her body would barely cooperate with what her brain told it to do.

When a shaggy head of blonde hair appeared in the doorway, Spencer was convinced it was an apparition caused by that damn epidural.

“Zac?” Spencer asked the apparition, which nodded its head. “What in the everloving hell are you doing here?”

“I… I had to be here,” he said softly, taking a few steps into the room.

Up close, Spencer could see that he certainly was real, even if he did look nothing like she remembered. The soft, sad eyes were the same, and were lined with bags that Spencer supposed were caused by jet lag. His clothes were wrinkled, and the long blonde hair she had loved was gone, replaced with a shaggy cut that, in her opinion, didn’t suit him at all. Her eyes fell to his chest and she saw that the necklace he usually wore his wedding band on was gone.

“How did you even know?” Spencer asked.

Zac looked down sheepishly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I called you once… Abbey answered, and she told me. Please don’t be mad at her. I shouldn’t have called, I guess, except that you were the first person I thought of when my divorce was finalized. I just missed you, and I thought if we talked…”

“I’d come back to you now that you’re single,” Spencer finished for him.

Zac nodded. “I know it was dumb, but if I hadn’t called, I wouldn’t have known… you weren’t even going to tell me, were you?”

“No,” Spencer admitted. “I tried… I tried to have an abortion, but apparently I couldn’t even do that right. I got so sick that I threw the pill up, and apparently I do have a heart after all, because I couldn’t follow through with the… you know… the suction.”

He made a face that accurately mirrored how Spencer felt about that. There had been a chance that the pregnancy still wouldn’t go to term or might result in birth defects, but every ultrasound had revealed no problems and that was enough to convince Spencer that maybe she could go through with having a baby– _Zac’s_ baby.

“Anyway, I… I don’t know, I thought you were going to work things out and…” She winced as a particularly rough contraction ripped through her body. “I couldn’t ruin that for you, you know? If you had a chance to save your marriage… this baby would ruin that. So if I couldn’t get rid of it, I could at least keep it my secret.”

“But it’s _my_ baby,” Zac stated plainly.

“It is,” Spencer agreed, wincing again. “It’s a little girl, and she is currently being a serious pain in my ass—literally—so I couldn’t deny that she’s yours if I tried.”

Zac laughed loudly. “How long have you been here?”

“Hell if I know,” Spencer said. “Six, seven hours? Surely this is almost over…”

“I think you’re just getting to the really fun part, actually,” Zac replied.

“The part where I curse you for ever coming into my life and doing this to me? I’ve been doing that for months.” Spencer smirked.

Zac’s laughter at that didn’t last long before Spencer drowned it out with a long, loud groan. He pressed the button on the side of her bed that summoned a nurse and pulled up a chair next to her. Spencer wanted to hate him for just waltzing in and assuming he could stay, but she knew it was more than a little bit unfair for her to deprive him of seeing his daughter born. She had tried to do this right, to save him and spare him even more pain. She had failed.

The next few hours were a blur of pain, pushing and countless faces that all blended together into one hospital scrub green blur. The only face that stood out was Zac’s. He stayed right by her side the entire time, letting her squeeze his hand until she was sure he would never be able to play drums again. He never complained. He let Spencer pour all of her anger and frustration into him, the pain of labor and birth mixing with the pain of knowing she had thrown his life so terribly off course. The pain of being without him for the last nine months.

Once their baby girl had finally been brought into the world, it took more than a little coaxing to get everyone else out of the room and give them some time alone. Zac had faded into the background as Spencer’s parents put aside their differences long enough to say hello to the baby, and he remained there as a kind but firm nurse escorted everyone else back to the waiting room.

“She’s kind of cute,” Spencer remarked, smiling down at the baby she held against her chest. “I mean, she looks like you, but I suppose I won’t hold that against her. Much.”

“Looks like me?” Zac repeated, stepping in closer and taking a seat on the edge of the hospital bed. “Not with that bright red hair she doesn’t.”

“Your ears, though. Poor thing.” Spencer smirked and flicked one of Zac’s ears. She was starting to suspect that giving birth had made her a little loopy. Some strange side effect of the epidural and her own crazy hormones, she supposed.

Zac leaned against Spencer and took one of the baby’s tiny hands in his. “Well, I think she’s gorgeous. Does she have a name yet?”

“Eleanor,” Spencer blurted out. She hadn’t settled on a name for certain, but that was one she kept coming back to. She blamed her lecture on Jane Austen the previous semester.

“Middle name?” Zac prodded.

“I hadn’t gotten that far,” Spencer admitted. “I didn’t… I still don’t think I was really prepared for this moment. And definitely not for you to be here with me when it happened.”

“Scarlett or Ruby,” Zac said, ignoring Spencer’s other words. “All that red hair, you know.”

Spencer nodded. “Ruby. Eleanor Ruby.”

“Eleanor Ruby Hanson,” Zac said softly.

Spencer sighed, but didn’t correct him. She certainly hadn’t planned to give the baby his name, but then again, she had barely planned this far ahead at all. Seeing the way Zac stared down at their baby girl, she knew she couldn’t deny him that. She couldn’t deny him her, nor could she deny Eleanor the chance to know her father. She didn’t know what the future held for the two of them, but that much she knew.

“Eleanor Ruby Hanson,” Spencer repeated with a faint smile.


End file.
